The Decameron: Day 10: Eighth Tale Summary & Analysis

Titus’s love is so forceful that it begins to make him ill. Gisippus can understand the attraction, for he also recognizes Sophronia’s beauty, but he doesn’t feel so passionately about her as his friend does. As the two men continue to discuss the predicament, it becomes increasingly hard to ignore the fact that their conversation about who has a better claim to Sophronia excludes her potential desires. She thus becomes an object to be traded or haggled over between the two. And this objectification—in addition to a gender hierarchy that considers men more important and valuable than women anyway—contributes to Gisippus’s quick assurance that his friend’s life is more important to him than the woman he’s supposed to marry.

Gisippus’s analysis of the situation connects love and class: people of noble temperament (and, in this case, of aristocratic class status) are both particularly susceptible to falling in love and worthy of being loved. And while Titus cursed fortune, Gisippus reminds him of how fast fortune’s wheel can turn and bring good things to those who suffer. If the conversation begins to strike modern readers as increasingly academic as it goes on, this is because the tale is less a narrative than it is an example of a rhetorical exercise on the theme of friendship. And as the friends discuss what to do, they neither imagine nor consider Sophronia’s needs and desires. When Gisippus offers her to his friend as a gift, it’s clear that they think of her more as an object to be possessed (or shared) than as another person.

Titus’s attempt to rebut his friend’s offer is belied by the force of love, which will kill him if he doesn’t have Sophronia. His claims that he is inferior to his friend also ring hollow, since the tale has so carefully established the similarities between the two. Gisippus’s rationale for preferring to lose Sophronia to Titus is steeped in misogyny, since he claims that women are indistinguishable and replaceable, in contrast to friends. The friends’ tendency to view her as an object to be shared rather than a person is  confirmed in these comments.

The trade of Sophronia from one friend to another isn’t just a personal affair, and although they’re still not considering how this turn of events might strike her, they are aware that it could cause scandal by suggesting that Gisippus has changed his mind about the carefully negotiated marriage. Moreover, if Gisippus publicly renounces his claim, there’s no guarantee that Sophronia’s relatives will readily accept Titus in Gisippus’s place. Yet, the necessary subterfuge doesn’t bother either man, given their single-minded focus on the issue of securing and confirming their friendship through this act of extreme generosity. They even seem to expect that, once revealed, any reasonable person will agree with them, and the opinions of the rest can be utterly disregarded.

For all his willingness to trick Sophronia into marrying him, Titus is nevertheless anxious to make his marriage to her legal. According to medieval legal standards, the exchange of vows and rings followed by consummation counts as a legitimate, legally binding marriage (similar to the marriage contracted by Alessandro and the Abbot in White in II, 3). Nevertheless, an increasing emphasis on the consent of both parties (usually cited to prevent parents from forcing their children into unhappy marriages for political or material reasons) means that even medieval audiences would have been aware of and possibly uncomfortable over Titus’s evident deception, since Sophronia thinks she’s getting into bed with Gisippus. And, when the men are forced to reveal the truth, she doesn’t take the deception or the trade kindly, suggesting that she does have opinions about their plan, even if she wasn’t consulted.

Just like the conversation between Titus and Gisippus earlier, Titus’s harangue of Gisippus’s and Sophronia’s relatives is a rhetorical exercise focused on philosophical ideas and rhetorical flourish. The argument he makes is syncretic (or a fusion of ancient Roman and medieval Christian ideas about religion) and wordy, but it basically boils down to the idea that whatever has happened was meant to have happened (or else it wouldn’t have happened). However, since this argument doesn’t address specific concerns about the trick the pair played on Sophronia and her family, he will offer further rebuttals as necessary.

Titus articulates a very narrow concept of nobility here, which takes personal character into account but also considers wealth, title, and ancestry. While this suits his argument in this tale, it also contradicts The Decameron’s main argument that one’s character and choices are more important than the accidents of fortune such as one’s family of origin or current wealth. His comments also force a tiny wedge between the friends, who up to this point have been portrayed and have considered themselves to be exactly equal. Now, Titus exploits the differences between himself and Gisippus to claim that he’s the more worthy man.

Titus’s arguments about the legality and moral rightness of his marriage all depend on a conception of women as things to be disposed of and traded between men. Gisippus, because he was Sophronia’s fiancé, was set to become her master anyway, and this gave him the right to give her to his friend. The extended metaphor of the cobbler, furthermore, suggests that women are little more important than shoes. And he blames the victim for not ensuring that she was making promises to the correct man in the dark. These arguments collectively underline Sophronia’s secondary status—and the disenfranchisement of women generally throughout the tales.

At the conclusion of his carefully constructed and elegantly executed arguments, Titus backs himself up with threats and extortion; it seems his anticipation that the Greek families will accept the situation is based not so much in a feeling that they’re reasonable, but rather in a sense of his own superiority as a Roman. He reminds everyone that Sophronia is still vulnerable and that he has the power and the right to deprive her family of her or to disown and abandon her. Her family decides not to provoke Titus further, and sends Sophronia with him to Rome, where the tale assures readers that she came to love her new husband.

However, while the first half of the tale featured Titus’s ascent from the bottom of bad fortune to the top, the second half of the tale sees Gisippus himself falling from the heights of fortune’s favor. He once confirmed his friendship with Titus by generously offering him Sophronia, and now he hopes that his friend will be even a little bit as generous with him. Yet, if fortune causes Titus to misrecognize Gisippus, it’s only to allow him to prove that his own love is as selfless and generous as his friend’s.

When Gisippus gave Sophronia to Titus, both friends described it as giving her to a second self. Titus acts out of this same logic when he tries to interpose his own body between his friend’s and the justice of the court. Their example is so moving that even hardened criminals respond to it, demonstrating the strength of true friendship among men.

Now that Titus and Gisippus have been reunited, Titus has the opportunity to cement their friendship by offering his friend a wife in the same way that Gisippus once offered Sophronia to him. And again, Fulvia’s wishes aren’t considered; much like her sister-in-law, she is traded like an object between the friends. With harmony, balance, and exact equality between the friends restored, they live happily ever after.

Filomena’s final comments, like so much of the tale, bear the hallmarks of a rhetorical exercise. But, coming as close to the end of The Decameron as they do, they also reflect the friendship that characterized the brigata. Importantly, she claims that friendship is a powerful force for moderation, encouraging virtue and discouraging vice. In the disordered and chaotic world, this order is rare, but the brigata itself represents the possibility for a just and well-moderated society.